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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25722295">Lift</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1Nj4/pseuds/N1Nj4'>N1Nj4</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Last of Us</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Betaed, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/F, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:00:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,521</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25722295</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1Nj4/pseuds/N1Nj4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She felt lighter. As if the walk halfway across the country had hollowed her out.</p><p>Maybe it had.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dina &amp; Ellie (The Last of Us), Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lift</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She felt lighter. As if the walk halfway across the country had hollowed her out.</p><p>Maybe it had. </p><p>At the start, she’d been consumed with the possibility of retribution, the frantic desire to<em> make her pay</em>. Not just for what she’d done to Joel. But what she was still doing. How she was still disrupting her life. As much as she had tried to mold herself into the type of woman who could make a living on the farm, have a normal life with her wife, and raise a child right in a world so wrong… <em> She </em>would be there, in the shadowed corners of her memories. Springing forth time and again to render her utterly helpless and inconsolable. To chip away at the most important relationship in her life.</p><p>To scare her son.</p><p>It seemed as though there was always a section of her mind rewinding the tape of Joel’s last moments and the mercy he had been denied. The crushing inhumanity of making her watch while the closest thing she had to a father was beaten to death with a fucking golf club.</p><p>It was too much.</p><p>It would probably always be <em> too much</em>.</p><p>So when the chance came in the form of a credible lead, she jumped on the opportunity to finally end it and close the chapter in this book. She wasn’t so naive to think that removing that monster from this plane of existence would fix all of her problems, which she had to admit, were many. But it was a start.</p><p>When she set out from the back porch, her body had felt leaden. There was the heavy weight of obligation and finality draped across her shoulders. She’d worn it like a cape as she soldiered on, mile after mile. </p><p>As the weeks passed the burden became a part of her. When her resolve would falter, when food was scarce and the threat of starvation crept up the back of her neck, she would pull the cape tighter around her shoulders and press on. Week after week she wrapped herself in its familiar comfort and, slowly but surely, it began to fray at the edges.</p><p>By the time she arrived in Santa Barbara, it was threadbare with overuse. The sense of duty and lofty ideals had long been stripped away. Her sole motivation for trudging on, placing one foot in front of the other, reverberated around her skull as though a perpetual echo: <em> Finish it</em>.</p><p>She would. She had to.</p><p>Until she didn’t.</p><p>**</p><p>The surf flowing over her hadn’t stirred her from her reverie until hours later. And she was still unable to comprehend exactly what had happened. Perhaps Dina was right and there was some unseen entity controlling their every move. </p><p>Or perhaps she simply chickened out. </p><p>Despite her innate ability to remain ignorant of the totality of the circumstances, and with nothing but time stretched out before her, she slowly sifted through the choices which had brought her to this ultimatum. She took pause to reflect on her previous actions, to disassociate from her former decisions and view them objectively. </p><p>And despite her detachment, it still cut fresh wounds.</p><p>She saw with painstaking clarity how self-absorbed she had been, even before the terrible events leading to Joel’s murder. And how much worse it had become after Jesse’s. </p><p>Opening up to people had gone from difficult to impossible. She’d told herself she shut out her loved ones to protect them, but in reality, she was preventing herself from further disappointment. She knew there’d be no need to be afraid of ending up alone if she didn't let people close in the first place. </p><p>It’s pretty much guaranteed.</p><p>And, perhaps, there was a security in this surety that she found both comforting and alarming. </p><p>**</p><p>The resulting cognitive dissonance was deeply rooted. It absorbed her mind just as the cordyceps overtook her brain, albeit incorporeal.</p><p>Knowing she would end up alone spared her from the disappointment of trying to alter that course, and failing. However, it also meant she had to surrender to the one thing she feared above all. The wild oscillations tore her in two. Cracks and fissures sprung up in the guises employed to hide such insecurities. </p><p>The fact that she couldn’t even maintain her outward appearance devastated her ability to cope. Her life revolved around playing the parts crafted for her: a daughter she never got to be, the one opportunity at a cure for all humanity, a peaceful Jackson resident, a wife, a mother, a survivor. Everyone expected something from her. Demanded a piece of her that she didn’t necessarily have to give. And when she tried, truly <em> tried… </em> people were <em> taken </em>from her.</p><p>Jesse had wanted a friend, and their friendship got him killed.</p><p>Riley had wanted her to be someone special in her life, and got infected coming back for her.</p><p>Joel had wanted her to have a life to live, and he had been brutally tortured for it.</p><p>Dina had wanted a companion, someone to walk with her through life. </p><p>She had walked out the door.</p><p>She couldn’t be humanity’s saving grace, or a normal, cookie-cutter resident, or even the familial support that her wife needed. She couldn’t slide the various costumes over her head without losing a small piece of herself. Knowing she was a fraud. Knowing she didn’t belong in this life, that she was on borrowed time. </p><p>The visions served as a reminder of her inadequacies. Her failures. The pretense that she could ever have a normal life. With increasing frequency the episodes ate away at her exterior, attacking her where she was most vulnerable, attacking her from within. </p><p>Crumbling this way, she wasn’t even sure you could call it surviving. </p><p>**</p><p>Pinpointing when the garbs began to slip in earnest hadn't been difficult. They were in Seattle, using the theater as a base of operations. They had been surrounded by disguises, elaborate costumes used to entertain crowds of onlookers. With the passing hours, the irrevocable actions had stripped away her carefully constructed veneer, exposing the magnitude of her anguish, her grief. Dina had tried to console her. To stitch her up and wipe away the blood. </p><p>Her blood? Their blood? She wasn’t even sure.</p><p>She’d been spiraling in the void. Her purgatory, apparently, was vast. </p><p>That it had begun there, surrounded by personas she didn’t have the strength to maintain, had been a sick joke, and the irony had not been lost on her.</p><p>And yet, looking now through the lens of introspection, she saw that her grief was just another layer. Another facade that hadn’t yet been torn down. Beneath the depths of her desolation lay buried the determination for her existence to mean something. </p><p>To really <em> mean </em>something. </p><p>It couldn’t all have been for nothing. All the physical pain, the emotional suffering, the sleepless nights, the unbearable guilt… the trauma that it seemed she couldn’t outrun... it couldn’t all have been meaningless. Her turbulent thoughts delivered her to the shore of uncertainty. In her attempts to protect herself from disappointment, she had thwarted her ability to understand her own significance. </p><p>It <em> had </em> meant something. <em> She </em>meant something.</p><p>She had just been too self-absorbed to see it before.</p><p>Jesse had declared his friend’s problems were his problems. </p><p>Riley was willing to abandon the Fireflies, her lifelong dream, just for her.</p><p>Joel paid the ultimate price because he couldn’t lose her, couldn’t allow the closest thing he had to a daughter to be killed.</p><p>Dina had stayed resolutely by her side, even as she was fracturing. Even as months later, she still reeled from what <em> she </em> had done.</p><p>She mattered to <em> other people. </em> Whereas up until this point, she could only recognize their effects on her.</p><p>Self-ab-fucking-sorption.</p><p>Without a doubt, she knew how <em> she </em>felt. How the emotions raged, unchecked, inside of her. She didn’t operate at a moderate pace. In fact, she was hard-pressed to name a single thing she did in moderation. When she was scared, she was terrified. When she was proud, she was cocky. When she was angry and incensed, nothing could steer her from the warpath. And when she loved, it was with a passion that burned so brightly she swore it seared her insides. She simply didn’t do things halfway. It was full-tilt or bust.</p><p>And now, as the wind sand-blasted her sunken face and her eyes watered with resolve, she was determined.</p><p>Determined to get back. To those she mattered to. To those who mattered to her. She would throw off the costumes and wear her skin, scarred and damaged as it was. Her son had loved her unconditionally. Her wife had loved her unequivocally. They deserved more than the broken fragments she’d been hiding behind.</p><p>It would be hard to be that vulnerable, terrifying to lift herself from the layers and layers of fortifications she’d constructed. But it would not be impossible.</p><p>And she was determined.</p><p>As she approached the gates, she felt lighter. As if the walk halfway across the country had hollowed her out.</p><p>Maybe it had. </p><p>And she was ready to be full again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Many thanks to my lovely beta  Elison_Saquet0!<br/>Please drop a comment, they are my fuel for writing :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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